North Face (26 page)

So many sounds of activity were going on inside that he could not be sure whether anyone had answered his knock. His hand on the doorknob, he paused, seized with sudden misgiving about having shaved; involuntary castaways should manage less neatly. Fortifying himself, he decided that this was not the kind of thing a woman would think of.

He went in.

Afterwards, he was never quite successful in recalling all the details of the interview. He tried several times, moved by anxiety to convince himself that it had gone off perfectly. He did remember, however, that Mrs Kearsey had been running to and fro, at what seemed to be high pressure, between the gas cooker and the table, and that her face, as he appeared, expressed less of moral censure than of frenzied irritation. He was also vaguely aware that she had been rebuking the little maid in a voice rather different from the one she used in the Lounge, and that he had entered in the middle of it. She had on an old chintz apron, none too clean; this she hurriedly and reproachfully removed, while he put over his opening speech. During the rest of the dialogue, the maid was scuttling in and out with trays; and Mrs Kearsey turned round, every time she came back, to watch her activities and correct them in a distraught
sotto voce.

Resolved not to be put off by any of this, Neil stood his ground, and affected an imperturbable, easy charm. He had resurrected this manner from the days of his first appointment, where the Head’s domineering wife had responded to it fairly well; and did not pause to reflect that he had not tried it on Mrs Kearsey before. She seemed at least to be looking at him with awakened interest, and (after the maid’s activities had subsided) to be hanging on his words. When he had run himself to a standstill, she replied briefly to the effect that she
had
been a little worried last night, but that accidents would happen, and that she was glad to know they were safe and sound. Detecting a note of reserve, and anxious to leave no telling point unmade, Neil assured her that he would have rung up last night to explain, if she had been on the phone. With a noticeable drop in temperature, Mrs Kearsey replied that it
was
a convenience, if it hadn’t been for the war; but that one couldn’t have everything nowadays the way one had been used to. Of course not, he agreed a little too hastily; no, quite. There was a pause. Mrs Kearsey rushed to the cooker, where a saucepan connected with the next course was boiling over. Having dealt with this and finding him still there searching for an exit-line, she remarked, with the air of one stating the obvious, that it was a pity she hadn’t known in time to get lunch for them, but after having kept supper hot for two hours last night, she really hadn’t known what to do, and she expected they would have made arrangements. He assured her they had, with an air of one accustomed to take charge of such situations, which almost convinced himself. Mrs Kearsey said that in that case she would expect them for supper, and returned to the saucepan. He became aware that the interview was over.

He went out into the corridor, wiped his brow (the kitchen had been like an extension of the oven) and said to himself that as she hadn’t asked them to leave she must evidently have been satisfied. The thought visited him that landladies cannot easily expel guests who behave themselves on the premises, whatever they do elsewhere; but he did his best to dismiss it. He had better find Ellen, and take her along for a meal. Their public debut would now have to remain in suspense till supper-time.

Ellen was not in sight; but he heard voices, just inside the door of the Lounge. She must be there; they had caught her unprotected. He strode to the door.

Just before he got there, a voice reached him. It was Miss Searle’s, full of well-bred sympathy and understanding.

“How
awkward for you. I remember something very similar happening to a colleague of mine, on a walking-tour in Dalmatia. But the British Consul was very helpful.”

Then he heard Ellen. She was stammering. In the grip of her intractable shyness, she sounded like a schoolgirl having a session with the better kind of housemistress.

“Yes—and of course we hadn’t anything with us, not even a toothbrush; if I hadn’t had a rucksack I don’t suppose the hotel would have taken me in. And there wasn’t any s-soap; it’s awful trying to get clean with just water. And it was even worse for Mr Langton; he had to go to an awful little place in a back street, and didn’t even have a room to himself.”

It was the perfect approach. She couldn’t have done better if a producer had coached her in it for weeks. When Miss Searle crossed the hall in response to the gong, Neil stepped unobtrusively out of sight.

F
ROM THE ARM OF
the harbour, the lamps of the whitewashed cottages made snaky ripples that seemed to wriggle nearer across the lazy sea. There was a smell of tar and seaweed; the infrequent mew of the gulls had the different note of night.

“Did you mind coming out and giving them a bit more to talk about?”

“No. I like it here.”

“Supper didn’t go off too badly, did it? Though the don takes a dim view of me, I’m afraid. She’d think twice before she gave one of her students late leave to go out with me. Miss What’s-her-name was a bit subdued, I thought.”

“Miss Fisher doesn’t miss very much.”

“Well, we didn’t give them much to go on.”

“Look, there’s a ship out in the channel.”

They stood together, watching the port light which seemed scarcely to move against the irregular beaded points that picked out the coast of Wales.

“Come here a moment.”

“I am here.”

“I’d like to be sure.”

“Neil.”

“Yes?”

“If I’m going to think this over, you must too. No, I’m serious now. I’ve not known you very long, but I feel all this isn’t like you. If you were starting a climb, you’d want to find out more about the mountain first than you know about me. Whether the rock was good, or—or rotten. And if you started and then found it wasn’t justifiable, you’d turn back. You can now; you can any time.”

“This one’s either justifiable or impossible. Is it impossible?”

“I wish to God I could tell you. I think it would be fairer if I said yes.”

We ought to have this out, he thought. Here and now. Every instinct told him that retreat from this moment would have to be paid for. But there were parts of his own experience that he still felt he would never be able to talk about as long as he lived; it seemed both cruel and unjust that he should ask more of her than of himself.

“You don’t have to worry about me. I know what I’m doing and I’ve got no doubts about it. Incidentally, you don’t find out what rock’s like by standing at the root and guessing.”

“I don’t know how you have patience with me.”

“My dear, we’re both grown-up. I’ve made a headlong assault on you when you clearly weren’t ready. It must have been pretty obvious to you that I simply let go because, one way and another, I was bloody sick of holding on. You had patience with me.”

She said, half aloud, “I didn’t need any.”

The spume blowing in from the sea had left a thin cool film of salt on her lips. She would not open them when he kissed her; but he felt her hand touch his hair and quickly fall away. She turned her face aside; seeking for her mouth he found her cheek instead. It was salt as her lips had been, but slippery and warm.

“What is it?” He felt a sense of power and a certainty that not only the night was on his side. “Tell me now.”

“Ought we to stay much longer? Mrs Kearsey may want to lock up.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m afraid of all this.” She pulled one arm away to gesture vaguely at the night. “It looks like a canto in
Don Juan.
One can’t help it. It isn’t real.” Feeling his arms loosen she clung to him again; he could feel the catch in her breath. “Listen, Neil. Don’t risk anything on me. Never give me a chance to hurt you, even in little ways. I’m not worth it. Why do you have to do more than amuse yourself with me? I don’t mind if you do; I’d rather. I won’t be awkward, I promise; I won’t be any trouble to you at all, if only I know you’re not risking anything on me that matters.”

“Thanks for the thought; but I can look after myself without a nannie.”

“I’ve not been fair to you. I’ve let you give me too much. There are some people who are more—more involved by giving than by taking. If I hadn’t been utterly wrapped up in myself I’d have seen it before.”

“My dear child, we could both play at this game till kingdom come. Why not stop talking like a book and give living a chance?”

He took her back again. This time she was, as she had said just now, no trouble at all. Below the sea-salt, her mouth tasted by contrast sharply sweet. But, as before she had been too difficult, now she was too easy; her answers had a fluid kind of helplessness, like that of water moved by wind. Her mind was not in it; it stood, defeated and self-accused, somewhere apart. It made no sense to him that they could share this awareness without being able to overcome it. He let her go with disturbed senses and a spark of anger in his heart which, because he would not justify it, he would not own.

“Take it easy, my dear,” he said. “Take it as it comes. It’ll be all right.”

They walked back as they had come, his arm round her waist and her hand on his holding it there. The sea still made its soft plashing against the jetty, and a hushing noise on the shingle of the beach. The stars brightened. They were silent, and separate in themselves, for the rest of the way.

Miss Fisher looked up from the picture-postcard on which for the fourth time she was trying to vary the phrases. All four were going to colleagues who would probably compare them; but she was finding it hard to give the problem her whole mind.

“I’m not one to be hard on anybody,” she said. “People are only flesh and blood, is what I always think, and they make a nice couple, in a way, you can’t deny it; a nice contrast if you see what I mean. As for having proof, that’s hardly likely, now is it, when you come to think? But I’ve got my own eyes, and that’s good enough for me.”

“My own opinion,” said Miss Searle, “is that when an innocent explanation has not only been offered, but bears every mark of probability, the least one can do is to be charitable. Don’t you think so?”

“I should say it depends what you mean.” Miss Fisher found it hard to find a fulcrum for her sense of injustice. Far from lacking charity, she felt herself to be reacting with toleration, even with some generosity, to a self-evident fact. “I mean when a girl can’t even pass a man the butter without blushing up to her ears—”

“I can understand her embarrassment,” said Miss Searle tartly, “even better now than at the time.”

“—and when he says ‘Thank you’ one minute as if she was a perfect stranger, and the next ‘Will you have a biscuit’ as if he was the family doctor pepping up an urgent case … well, that’s only
one
thing. I mean, well, there it is.”

“From the little I know of Mr Langton, I should imagine he would feel responsible for the girl’s very awkward position, and sensitive to her shyness about it. I can’t see, myself, that any other explanation is necessary. Or kind.”

Unexpectedly, Miss Fisher felt an aching behind her eyes. Blinking it away, and not trusting herself to speak, she asked herself protestingly whether she wasn’t behaving like a good loser; hadn’t she taken people as she found them, even wished them luck; what effort of kindness greater than these was required? She. licked a stamp, fixed it, swallowed, and said, “Well, everyone’s got their own opinion, and you can’t say more.”

“I’m sure that’s much the best way of looking at it.”

“And another thing,” said Miss Fisher, nature suddenly rebelling, “he tried to squeeze her foot under the table, only she’d got it tucked up round her chair.”

“The table?” asked Miss Searle, pouncing on the syntactical error out of disgust for the rest.

Flicked on a tender surface, Miss Fisher paused with another licked stamp congealing in her hand.

“I ask you,” she said bitterly. “It’s pitch dark outside. What do you suppose they’re doing
now?”

“I have no idea. And I hardly feel it concerns either of us. Oh, dear, it seems to be later than I thought; I must really get to bed. Goodnight.”

Miss Fisher, giving her attention to pulling the sticky stamp from her fingers, did not respond.

“W
HAT IS IT NOW?”
asked Neil.

Ellen looked disconcerted. With his back to an old ash-tree, he was looking straight out across the moors; it was she who had been watching him.

“Nothing’s the matter. Why?”

Neil got out his pipe, cleaned the bowl with a twist of dry bracken, shook it out, and began to fill it. The silence became a contest of wills.

“When I said nothing, I meant nothing I could tell you without feeling a fool.”

“If you say so. I wouldn’t know.” He got out matches, and turned over on his stomach to shelter the flame.

“You’ll never do it, in this wind.” She picked up her sweater from the grass and, kneeling over him, held it beside his head for a screen. He thanked her; but she saw that he had already got the pipe drawing without it. She drew away again, and arranged the sweater to sit on.

There was another pause; then Ellen spoke again, in a sudden rush. “Well you asked for it. It’s just that there are times when you frighten me.”

“That must be thrilling,” said Neil moderately.

“I knew you’d make me feel a fool.”

He put the pipe down on a flat stone, and moved towards her.

“No. Not now. It stops me from thinking.”

“We mustn’t do that.” He began coaxing the pipe again.

“You made me tell you; it isn’t fair to make it so difficult. I don’t mean frightening in a simple way. You’re always kind to me, when anyone else wouldn’t be. When I know I’m being stupid and—and disappointing, you put up with it—”

“Blessed are the meek.”

“You’re the least meek person I ever knew. That’s what I’m trying to say. You’re kind for my sake partly, I know, and it’s good of you. But at the same time it’s as if you said, ‘You see, you can’t touch me.’ You put it up all round you, like a wall.”